How do we make decisions as consumers? What do we pay attention to, and how do our initial responses predict our final choices? To what extent are these processes unconscious and cannot be reflected in overt reports? This course will provide you with an introduction to some of the most basic methods in the emerging fields of consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing. You will learn about the methods employed and what they mean. You will learn about the basic brain mechanisms in consumer choice, and how to stay updated on these topics. The course will give an overview of the current and future uses of neuroscience in business.

Na lição

Learning & Memory

This module will focus on Learning & Memory. We will determine not only that there are multiple kinds of memory, but that they also serve multiple purposes. If anything, learning is the vehicle we need to understand the most in consumer behaviour. What causes memory, and can we be affected unconsciously by our memories? How can we measure memory effects, and what is the relationship between brand equity and the brain?
This module, we also have an interview with Prof. Richard Silberstein, who shares his view on neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience. Prof. Silberstein is the Founder and chairman of the neuromarketing company Neuro-Insight (http://www.neuro-insight.com/).

Conheça os instrutores

Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy

PhD in Neurobiology, Certified Neuropsychologist & Assistant Professor in Marketing & NeuroscienceHead of the Center for Decision Neuroscience, Department of Marketing at Copenhagen Business School, and Head of Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance at Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre

Hello again, this is a lecture number five on learning and memory.

We're, we're going to go through two studies and one single method.

We are going to talk about a study by Samuel McClure one of

those famous neuro marketing studies that are part of the foundation of

neuro marketing in modern days.

And we will talk about a study by about the effect of cognitive

load on, a part of her study at least looking at the effect of cognitive load or

workload, memory workload on consumer choice.

And we will talk about eye tracking as a method [NOISE] One of

the those famous studies of neuro marketing relies

on the basic knowledge that and basic insights, historically,

that if people are given a blind test of tasting Coke.

They're given Pepsi Cola or Coca Cola but they're, they don't really know.

People are very poor at distinguishing between the kinds of coke.

We might think we are good at it but

in reality we are not that really good at distinguishing.

And even more so if we are blind testing and just saying our preference.

We tend to prefer Pepsi Cola slightly more than Coca Cola, if we're blind testing,

probably because it contains a bit more sugar than Coca Cola.

But if people are believing they are tasting Coca Cola, they tend to

prefer that much more than if they believe that they're tasting Pepsi Cola.

Even though we aren't giving them a different coke.

So this effect was the interest of Sam McCleur and his colleagues.

Looking at the, the, the, brain responses underlying this effect.

This is a study that was published in the prestigious,

prestigious journal called Neuron in 2004.

What the researchers were doing was first they do a blind test session and

then they were doing what we can call the branded session.

When the researchers initially had participants inside the scanner

they first of all gave them some drinks in the FMRI, during the FMRI session.

And ask them to rate how much they liked the, the the taste.

Now at this time they didn't know what they were tasting.

So they were given Pepsi Cola, Coca Cola and so forth without knowing.

The more they enjoyed the taste of the cola the stronger activation they

found in the medial pre frontal cortex as you can see here.

And also the towards the, the bottom those are ventral medial prefrontal cortex.

As you can see here on the left side,

brain activation in two different, versions of that task.

Stronger activation is part of the region.

This part of the brain was related to stronger preference and

to stronger liking, so to speak.

As we saw in the last, in the last session when we talked about the Kurk and

Owl paper we saw.

Approximately the same part of the brain being engaged when

people enjoyed art more.

So this again is a highly, a preference region per se.

Then the researchers turned to the branding effect.

They informed people that now you're going to taste Coca Cola or

now you're going to taste Pepsi Cola.

And when people believed that they were going to taste Coca Cola and

were drinking it, of course first of all they did show a stronger preference for

when they believed it to be Coca Cola.

What the researchers found was a stronger activation of what's

called the hippocampus on both sides.

So it's a bilateral hypocamus activation, and

a stronger activation of what we know to be the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex.

The DLPFC here.

On the far right.

What this shows us is that the stronger activation of these regions is

related to what we know as the a memory structure, memory network.

So the hippocampus is a well known memory structure, and the dorslatertural

prefocal cortex is also highly related to things like working memory.

And the cones of workload for example.

So this suggests then that the effects of people being affected by

the brand relies on the memory structures of the hippocampus and the low.

The total Prefrontal cortex.

The interesting thing is, is of course that when the participants believed that

they were tasting Pepsi Cola, no such effect was happening.

So it shows that the way in which Coca Cola has a stronghold on

people's preference is through the memory system.

And that Pepsi does not have that effect at all.

And you can see that as the complete empty brain is

not because there is no brain activation, but there is no effect as

they found when people believed that they were tasting Coca Cola.

In the second study here,

we are talking about the millimeters of the average paper.

Written together with [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] and Koch and

In this study, we're going to focus just on the small part of that study.

The study itself was looking at different exposures and

different levels of visceral saliencies, how bright and how.

How, a, how forthcoming or

forth standing a particular product was on people's preference.

Part of that study has already demonstrated that the more

salient something is the more people will pay attention to it and

the more likely people are going to choose it.

What the researchers in a sub study wanted to

look at is whether people's work load can affect those choices.

So people, first of all, they have their stated preference.

So, they have their brand preference, so to speak.

And then they also have their the,

the duration of how long they actually saw the, the product.

What the researchers found was, as you can see on the right side here,

that during just a very brief presentation such as a hundred milliseconds,

which is more than enough to have a good impression of the actual product.

At this point, the saliency effects of

the more salient the product was had a stronger effect on people's preference.

They was much more likely to, to buy the product during, if,

if, if it was salient, during the 100 milliseconds.

During 300 and 500 milliseconds duration, they, there was no real

difference between the salient effect and the preference effect on people's choice.

And even at longer durations such as a thousand milliseconds,

especially during these cognitive workload tasks, we saw,

they saw that the the, the innate preference,

the stated preference had a much more stronger effect on people's preference.

Now the cognitive task that people did at this time was to do a pretty simple, but

still demanding mathematical task depending on,

so they had to focus on the screen while they were looking at the products.

And in between there would be some,

some stimuli would ask them to do certain simple mathematical computations,

but enough, at least, to, to have them cognitively loaded, so to speak.

And during those instances we can see that when the, when these stima are short,

people tend to rely on the,

how salient and how visually appealing the, the package is.

While if they had a bit more time up to a second,

they tend to have to rely more on their innate preferences.

So what this shows is that you can think about this in a store environment for

when people are choosing a piece of chocolate, for example, or

they are choosing a product in general, we see that if people are stressed,

if people are thinking about other things,

they're talking in their mobile phone and so forth.

Things are more salient, things that are more bright,

they're standing forward relatively to, to competitors are more likely be chosen.

While, if people have are are are taking a bit more time,

they can deliberate just for a second, they tend to focus more and

choose things that they already have a conscious stated preference for.

So now let's move on to the methods and if we talk about eye tracking I

think this is one of those most well known methods that is not unique to

neuro marketing per se but it's really good to use as neuro marketing.

Because it really provides,, a good index of, not only where people are looking, but

as we'll see, some other things as well.

We tend to at least distinguish between stationary eye tracking and

mobile eye tracking.

The stationary eye tracking is, as you can see here.

This is the, the Tobii, one of those Tobii eye trackers where you have the you have